Jumpscare != scary - How horror games devolved into peek-a-boo simulators

The concept of genre is interesting, when you think about it.

It harkens back to the need within human psychology to label everything, to categorise and organise so we can better understand everything around us. In terms of genre (and especially video-game genre) these labels exist to help use sift through the literal millions of games released throughout the years. Action games, RPG games, adventure, puzzle, etc. You name it, we've got it. We even have hybridised combinations of genres, like puzzle adventure or action RPG. These are results of brilliant and innovative people who decided to experiment by combining established genres together in clever ways. As an aspiring developer myself, I salute these pioneers of our industry!

(Cue patriotic music and bugle flare)

The problem I find though, and the point of me writing this, is that there seems to be one genre that refuses to budge and evolve in any meaningful way: the horror game. In fact, it seems to have devolved; most 'horror' games nowadays consist of setting up a spooky environment (i.e. Haunted House, cursed mansion, 'it's all a nightmare dream', etc.), having the player wander around aimlessly for a few minutes, popping in a disfigured creature on the screen with a scream and insta-killing the player back to main menu.

To me, this is a clear step backwards in game design standards as far as horror goes. Especially considering how, over 10 years ago, we had far superior titles like Silent Hill and Resident Evil that actually scared players without needing such 'jump-scare' moments. These days, I hardly ever witness or hear about a horror game in years that manages to convey that vital feeling of trepidation and dread that should accompany you throughout gameplay.

These days it's all 'oh no there's gonna be a jump-scare... Ah! There it is! OMG that was so scary! xD'.

Sigh.

Let me clarify this right here and now: what you experienced was not scary. What you experienced was startled. A feeling of surprise that, while similar, is not the same as fear.
My primary point of concern and annoyance with this is that the the general public, and even the development industry itself, seems to have convinced themselves that this is what a horror game is. I won't even get into the indie horror scene, as that field is so full of generic jump-scare games that it feels like looking into a cloning factory. But even the latest Resident Evil teaser, while being generally well put together and intriguing, simply has the player wonder about for a few minutes before getting knocked out by a deranged-looking man. The player never feels tense, oppressed or otherwise fearful while meandering about the environment.

Now admittedly, this is a fairly petty argument in the first place. Not only is it arguing semantics, it seems somewhat preposterous when you consider that all things horror tend to go the jump-scare route. Look at any horror film, amusement park ride or even novel, what you'll find as the common theme of the reliance on jump-scares to entertain their audience. Does this mean that I'm wrong? Am I simply whining about nothing?

I say no. Because while novels have jump-scares, they often spend paragraphs or chapters building a ominous atmosphere beforehand. Also, most horror novels rely far more on descriptive the horror in detail to scare the readers, providing subtle and cerebral scares instead of sudden lights and noise.
Amusement park rides contain mostly jump-scares, with workers dressed as ghosts or monsters providing most of the interactive jumps. But this is largely due to park rides having a very small window to entertain you, much smaller than other mediums. As such, they use the quickest and easiest way to scare and startle people; namely, jump-scares.

Horror films are the easiest comparison to video-games, since they are both visual mediums using sight and sound. Looking at horror films, it does indeed seem like most of them rely on a repetition of 'silence -> tension -> jump-scare' to propel their plot.
That is, until you look at international films.
Many European horror films,and especially in the case of Asian films, use grotesque imagery and a constant threat of the villain to create an ominous, panicky atmosphere that is seldom imitated in western horror films. There may be some bias here, but having seen several Japanese horror films (considered by many to be masters of horror) I can guarantee you will never see a blonde woman scream as a monster slashes up her friends, buckets of blood splashing onto the screen. No, the horror seen in international films is one of subtlety, of implied terrors lurking beneath the surface and the audience being plagued by uncertainty and hesitation. If jump-scares are used, they are used sparingly, and the screen does not cut to black every time the monster pops up for an ambush.


Some rebuttal of other counter-arguments:

• "What do you mean? I felt scared the whole time I was playing (insert jump-scare game here)!"

No, you didn't. This may sound condescending, but it's true.What you felt was the tenseness associated with the anticipation of the next jump-scare. This feeling is, while similar, different to the feeling of dread and trepidation that you would feel in actual horror games. Again this sounds condescending, but by actual horror games I refer to games that maintain the same feeling of tenseness and anticipation without completely relying on jump-scares.

• "There's no point arguing about this, since 'horror' and 'scary' are subjective and everyone experiences it differently. You may not find it scary, but other people do."

Well yes, that's true; fear is a purely subjective emotional response, and what is or is not scary cannot be definitively determined as a single thing. But while true, this argument is irrelevant to the subject at hand. Why? Because it's clear from a game design perspective that all these jump-scare games, even the AAA ones, have a clear goal in mind; to startle you. Everything in its gameplay loop feeds back to that single moment of 'BOO!', which provides a momentary high of emotion. But, once that high moment ends the tension drops all the way back down to ground-level, to the monotony and tediousness of bumbling around in a room. this would be fine if the game escalated its high moments each time, if each jump-scare was somehow new and unexpected, but no. It's always the same animatronic monster / little girl ghost / disfigured creature, and the game doesn't even try to go anywhere beyond that.


The overall point with all this, or the TL;DR version, is that horror games are slowly turning into long, drawn-out games of 'peek-a-boo'. Horror games are not, or at least were not, about players being stuck in a purgatory of being startled and instantly killed by a cliched monster that shows on screen for a half-second while giving you hearing damage. You can use jump-scares occasionally, since they are a legitimate tool for tension and entertainment. But please developers, don't let that be the only party trick up your sleeve. Learn other techniques like creating an atmosphere, placing subtle scare details, and designing a game the propels itself forward rather than repetition.

If you want to make a horror game, make sure the game you make can stand on its own without needing jump-scares.
Because if it can't, you haven't really made a horror game.